Recently I stopped for a burger on my way home from work at a new diner in Old Colorado City. The house is quite familiar to me, as I lived next door once! It has been a variety of restaurants for several decades and I am often sitting waiting to see what it will be next. It has been the Dive for a bit over a month
now.
As I sat there enjoying a great burger, I wondered about the history of the house. So far I have traced it back to the late 1800s. The house was smaller then. Later additions were made in the back to create restaurant dining space.
The original address was 1044 Lincoln. You may remember that street names and numbers changed when Colorado City and Colorado Springs were joined. After 1917, the house took on its present address: 3043 W. Pikes Peak.
The earliest residents I have found were the Reids. Andrew Reid and his wife Mary lived there with their seven children in 1889, when the area was known as Grandview. Andrew worked at the Greenlee Quarry in Red Rock Canyon. He died in 1892. His son, Andrew Jr., lived there with his mother until she died.
Young Andrew worked in the Colorado Midland shops and later for the Colorado Springs and Interurban Railway (streetcars) as an electrician. He worked for Interurban until the line closed in 1931. His mother seems to have died in the 1920s, and he was there until the 1940s, dying in 1949.
The next name associated with the house is Miller. Mary Reid Miller (Andrew Jr.'s sister) started working for the post office in 1908, initially in Colorado City. She retired in Casper, Wyoming in 1943, then returned here. Mary lived in the house into the 1960s before dying in a nursing home in 1966 at age 85.
I can remember being in the house perhaps once, around age 5. My family lived in Robert Hartley's Glendale Motel, 3036 W. Colorado Ave., where Wendy's is located now. We had a double unit, almost on Pikes Peak Avenue. Next to the Hartleys were the Sullivans, then the Jameses. We knew them fairly well.
Hoot Sullivan worked on the Midland Terminal and Earl James had a campground and gas station across Colorado. Mrs. Sullivan watched after my sister and I, as both of our parents worked. There were other members of the Reid family in Colorado City. Perhaps one of you is related to Fred or George Reid,
also of this family.